pravda: the terrible infant blog

I've recently become really interested in changing the sound in scenes from movies I like, for no other reason than to see what happens. The genesis of this came when the title themes from The 400 Blows and Throne of Blood came up back-to-back on my iTunes randomly, and I decided to switch them around. You can watch those videos here, on an older blog post.

Not long ago, I was watching bits and pieces of Across the Universe, the oft-disparaged '60s counter culture musical based on the music of The Beatles, from Broadway director Julie Taymor. As was previously demonstrated in my post on Kubrick, I often really enjoy widely disliked movies – Gaspar Noe's LOVE, for instance – and am routinely bored by more successful films. Across the Universe is no exception to this. I especially love the bowling scene, for its light, colors, and romance, which are three of my favorite things about cinema. Check out the scene:

So, that scene is my next sound experiment. My first thought was to replace the melodic and romantic Beatles track with something harsh and relentless – I chose “The Cell” by noise, drone, and black metal artist Crowhurst.

Then I thought it might be interesting to use someNas, whose cinematic descriptions of life typically focus on the black New York experience – could be very strange to have that floating over images of wealthy white suburban kids bowling in the '60s.

My final thought, musically, was to use some melodic hardcore from Modern Life is War – the defiant punk rock attitude of the song could maybe match the buoyant energy of the scene, while the pissed off sneer could serve as a counterpoint to the pre-Vietnam naivete on display.

The day after I decided to do all this, I stumbled upon a trailer for the new restoration of Pierrot Le Fou. It occurred to me while watching it that Across the Universe is in many ways the antithesis of Godard's style and philosophical approach to cinema. Watch the original trailer:

So I was swapped the audio from the trailer, which is almost the exact same length of the bowling scene, with the Beatles song.